Your Top Six “Western Films”?

Aw hell yeah.

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#2 Pick a Ford

  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
  • The Searchers
  • She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
  • Fort Apache
  • My Darling Clementine
  • I Can’t Choose!
  • Mustang II

0 voters

I had a gal do that to me. Didn’t make her my wife.

Can’t read the whole thread, sorry, but Cat Ballou is a fave. Lee Marvin is outstanding in dual roles.

Unforgiven is great. Find it on tv and you watch from than point until the end.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a western opera, a must see.

Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is a favorite. Awesome.

Not sure what else, maybe Ford’s The Searchers? Can The Quiet Man somehow fit in? Probably not.

Isn’t that a boxing movie? That takes place in Ireland?

Proof that if John Ford directed it, it isn’t necessarily a “Western Film”

All of these were on my short list. Seminal works. Cat Ballou is clawing around up in that thread as well.

I hadn’t thought of Once Upon a Time as Operatic, but you may be right about that.

Each of the major characters has their own musical score. Really sets the mood.

Also, it’s a bit of a satire. Remember near the end when the rail baron…

meets his end with a boot lowered with a pistol in it? That’s borderline spoof.

Henry Fonda’s role is amazing. So against type. So, so good. Just a fantastic movie, thought not always the easiest to watch because it’s long.

Morricone’s music is spectacular, and Leone had it played on set when shooting so the actors could react to it. It’s a gorgeous movie, clearly Leone’s best.

The musical identities (Peter and the Wolf?) really do add to that aspect, you’re right. I think Fonda may be the best thing about that film. I certainly think it’s the Leone Western that holds up the best given the passage of time.

Missed this. I agree Scott. Its his masterpiece.

This is an interesting Short Film, based upon (IMO) Stephen Crane’s best Short Story. Excellent cast, free on Amazon Prime. They were collected and shown on PBS as part of an Anthology called "“The American Short Story”. It’s superb.

“Beef Stew!? Spinach. Turnips. Beans.”

Leitmotifs. A technique usually associated with Wagnerian operas, but also used by Prokofiev, as you say, to good advantage in Peter and the Wolf. The most famous modern use, of course, is by John Williams in a fairly well-known set of space operas.

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#3 This is not a "Western Film"
Links to all these films are in the next post.

  • They All Are “Western Films”!!
  • None Are “Western Films”
  • No Country For Old Men
  • Junior Bonner
  • The Electric Horseman
  • Hud
  • Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
  • Brokeback Mountain
  • Lone Star
  • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

0 voters

Links for the Films mentioned in the above poll.

This is a great thread. I love the Western with the fire of a thousand suns.
My list
Searchers
No Country for Old Men
Outlaw Jose Wales
True Grit (Coen brothers version)
The Rover (It’s a western. Tell me I’m wrong)
Winchester '73

If the Rover’s disallowed (not that it could be because it’s a western) I’m picking The Proposition, which is a close seventh anyway.

There’s one film I’d love to add but I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, and that’s Five Fingers for Marseilles, which looks terrific.

There’s no disallowing, I think that’s all on you. I might agree with you, by the way, but I haven’t seen it. I am curious now, however. Looking at the description, I’d ask you and anyone else reading this thread; are Mad Max or The Road Warrior “Western Films”?

If you squint your eyes just right, you could see the Mad Max films as westerns. Max is more or less the man with no name from Clint’s movies. And if you also tilt your head just so then Fury Road becomes a kind of alternate version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Is that a “Western Film” (see above poll)?

I think Mad Max is a Post Apocalyptic film, and now I want to make that topic because there are a lot of them, but I have dinner and a movie to get ready for.